Friday, May 25, 2018

The Bolivarian Armed
Forces high command has again publically pledged loyalty to Nicolás Maduro, reelected
president on the 20 May elections, boycotted and denounced as a fraud by most
of the opposition.

In a statement called
“Proclama de Lealtad y Compromiso”
read during the pledge
ceremony by a middle ranking officer, the armed forces were defined as “Bolivarian,
Zamoristas, Chavistas, anti-imperialists, and anti-oligarchic.”

“You [Maduro] can
count on the loyalty and commitment of these patriotic soldiers to continue on
your side on this stoic battle against imperialism. We are firmly committed to
the continued construction of a great, socialist, free and sovereign fatherland,
ruled by the principles of social justice, equality, common wellbeing,
solidarity and peace,” read
the statement.

Maduro thanked the
armed forces for their loyalty and said that the Proclama should be signed by all officers and published. But he
also warned of a conspiracy by the United States and Colombia. “In the last
weeks we have dismantled a conspiracy financed by Colombia and encouraged by the
United States to divide the Armed Forces and to stop the May 20 elections,” he
said.

He also said that the
leaders of the conspiracy have been arrested and that security forces are still
searching for its main “financial backer” [financiasta].

Local
media has reported that at least 38 military officers have been arrested in
the past two weeks. Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Chavez’ ex defense minister has
been under arrest since
March 13 on charges of “espionage, conspiracy, and instigation to commit
crimes.”

The arrested military
officers “have confessed and have been convicted, they sold themselves to
Colombia to betray the Bolivarian Armed Forces. ¡Be all on alert! ¡Do not drop your
guard! This is a time for combat. They wanted to affect our elections and
democracy: the North American empire, the Colombian oligarchy,” said
Maduro.

Aporrea, a chavista Web portal has increasingly
become a space for critical chavismo.
The term usually applies to people who defend the “legacy” of the Comandante and claim that president
Maduro has betrayed that legacy.

Conspiracy theories
about Maduro’s true intentions are an important part of critical chavismo.
Vivas Santana, for example, is not shy to call his own analysis a Teoría madurista de la conspiración contra
Chávez.

According to Vivas
Santana, Maduro´s conspiracy against Chávez, which includes Diosdado Cabello as
co-conspirator, began way back in 1999 with the approval of the Bolivarian Constitution.
The fact that now president Maduro has convened a new Constitutive Assembly in order
to “abolish” that Constitution is evidence, for the author, of Maduro’s
intentions, since that year, of stablishing a “neo-totalitarian project”.

Russia’s Vladimir
Putin is the main “international connection” of Maduro’s conspiracy. “Why did
not Putin invite Chávez, as Lula DaSilva did from Brazil, to treat his cancer
in Moscow if he was then Russia’s prime minister?” asks suspiciously Vivas
Santana. “It becomes evident that the origins of the conspiracy against Chávez
had tow clear long term aims,” answers the author, “The first was the abrogation
of the 1999 Constitution in order to ‘legally’ implement neo-totalitarianism.
The second was to sell PDVSA [Venezuela’s oil company] and hand our oil, gas, mineral,
and gold reserves to international groups, mainly Russian and Chinese, as a way
to consolidate power with the help of foreign governments with unipersonal
political systems and with enough power within the UN Security Council.”

Vivas Santana promises
a second part to his piece. In it he will consider “if the cancer that affected
the Bolivarian leader was really murder.”